New York City, March 10, 2016

★★★★ The view out the open end of the window, next to the winter-bleared pane, seemed like something captured through high-quality optics. The ear felt the acoustics extending out indefinitely. The four-year-old was gratified to be free to wear his hoodie, and then at his heels through the school door came another boy in shorts and sandals. Up in the tops of the trees on 64th Street was the first shimmer of green. The clouds thickened but the sun kept pushing through for long moments. Not long past midday, a few tiny drops of rain fell from the bright and mottled sky. On the back side of Lincoln Center the sidewalk was full of branches and the smell of cut green wood, as a worker trimmed the shrubbery back within its bounds. The third-graders launched paper airplanes along the sidewalk at dismissal. Fresh air floated over the couch where the children were staring into a pixelated artificial world.